Rug Origins: American Rugs

Known today as the Hooked Rugs or Navajo Rugs, there is an extensive history behind American Rugs. In the 17th Century, settlers working with limited resources developed hooked rugs that displayed design themes such as geometric patterns, floral prints, landscapes, seascapes, and animals. Each design represented a sense of individual expression and gave thee hooked rugs their momentum to push popularity through the 19th Century.

Today these antique rugs serve as an emblem for the American Rug Industry. Inspired by a multitude of countries, each design was inspired by the countries own immigrants and their countries of origin. In these uniquely mixed designs, you will find religious imagery and symbols or early colonial life that was created by candlelight. Their style is nostalgic and reflective of early American life. These American rugs thus became one of the nation’s first art forms in its early days.

Traditionally used for floor coverings and warmth inside old new England homes. These pieces quickly gained in popularity as more people began to see them as decorative pieces to their homes. Attention began to gather as people would start to notice the details in these braided rugs carefully placed in front of fireplaces. The practical craft began to grow in design and style from folk art and embedded stories to past times and quilt-making the foundation of American rugs was emerging as to all American homes of every class and establishing its own story for antique American rugs.

Prior to the 19th Century, rugs were imported from Europe to America, but during the revolutionary war, England began to implement high tariffs on its imports to stray Americans from importing rugs. The first practice of rug manufacturing in the United States thus began in New England’s Massachusetts, where manufactures began the American rug trade.